Chapter 17
Seventeen
That night, I was early to the restaurant, Caleb on time, and Natalie, who had swung home to shower after helping me pack,
late. Caleb’s hug was a pulse of familiarity. The hostess seated us at a prime sidewalk table, partially obscured by a potted
green.
It was a four-top, but Caleb slid into the seat beside me. He wore a thin gray sweater and light jeans tailored to his frame.
“While we’re waiting for your friend, I have to show you these pictures.”
“Oooh,” I said. “Boudoir? What are we talking?”
He poked my side, hurriedly tapping on his phone. As he settled, his leg rested against mine, his forearm sidling close to
me. His smell was something familiar, yet unnamable. “New exhibit.”
I studied it. “An under-the-sea immersion experience?”
“Yeah, but not one you’d expect. It looks beautiful, doesn’t it? At first. All those blues.” He handed me the phone. “But
look closer.”
Aquas and greens and that navy blue of our childhood, blending and overlapping like watercolors. But then I zeroed in on what
he meant. A kelly-green bullfrog toy, a deflated soccer ball, the soda can six-pack rings I remembered cutting so fish and
geese wouldn’t get stuck in them. I tapped the screen. “Side note: Did those can-holders have the best PR campaign ever?”
“They’re called yokes, and yes. The exhibit’s on plastic in the ocean,” Caleb said. “D’you know that if we actually took all the plastic floating in the sea and set it on the surface, it would nearly blanket it?”
I winced. “That’s tragic.”
He nodded. “Our exhibit is inspired from a Japanese installation at the Sendai Umino-Mori Aquarium. Are you familiar with
Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer?”
I flipped through the memory banks. I was always good at trivia thanks to a college Western civ class. “Van Gogh?”
“You got it.” His voice sped up. “They had AI study seven famous pieces of ocean-related artwork. Then they asked it to re-create
the paintings as if they were made in 2050. So in its artificial iteration, Seascape’s ocean is littered with colorful plastic.”
“AI is—wow.”
“Definitely. If you would’ve told me a few years ago that we could build a machine that would reverse-engineer human traits
and capabilities and then use it to mimic our own skills, I’d ask you who was starring in the movie.”
“Right?” I scrutinized his picture. “Not to mention the shift in thought patterns and threat to jobs. The prevailing theory
around the newsroom is AI must be involved with Soulmail somehow. But that’s not confirmed by intel.”
“Wow. Intel. Cool kid privilege,” Caleb teased. “The biggest intel I get is that a collection is about to go up before it
does.”
“It’s not all government secrets. Most of it is early wakeup and makeup. This feels surreal.”
“Thanks.” He leaned back. “Ours isn’t as innovative, but it’s interactive. When you enter the dome, you’re surrounded. You
see a slice of the ocean from a new perspective. Plus, kids are really responding to the exhibit, which is something.” He
pocketed his phone. “I heard one kid absolutely reaming out a mom for her bottled water delivery.”
Perspective. I thought of Dad’s where you place your attention dictates your experience in the world line. My laugh surprised me. “I’d love to see it.”
“Oh!” Caleb’s eyebrows rose. “Come. I’d like that.” His face, his frame, everything about him read bright and intense. It
was obvious how much his work charged him. I can still read you, I thought. A seed of wonder.
“Can you believe it’s been almost a month since Soulmail happened?” he asked.
“This has been the weirdest almost-month of my life.” Late sun glinted off the buildings beside us, turning our arms a goldish-orange.
Sherbet. The sort of light that was gone so fast you could barely capture it and rarely film it. A location too perfect to
scout.
A bead of wistful energy constricted my throat. When it came to my career, my face would shout less bright intensity and more dubious bewilderment. Plus, now that my executive producer opportunity had disintegrated, it would take me so much longer to build up the sort
of cred I needed to advance the part of my career I actually cared about.
“What is it?” Caleb asked.
“What?”
“You have that look.”
“Specificity is a gift, Caleb.”
“It’s the one you got when you were trying to solve something you couldn’t.”
He could still read me, too. I lowered my voice. “I have to tell work I can’t do this special episode.” I stopped when a divot
appeared between his brows. I didn’t mention my other need to figure out whether I should entertain meeting up with Wells,
or just stick to my comfortable communication moratorium.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Natalie said, interrupting my mental volleying as she rushed to our table. Caleb moved to offer her his seat, which she sank into. “If it isn’t Caleb the Cape Cod curator.”
Even though Natalie had been prepared to dislike Caleb, by the second drink, she’d relaxed, her trademark tinkling laugh filling
me with warmth. I had imagined the sidewalk seating would feel congested, but the nighttime view of Union Square Park was
anything but. As day glossed into night, large, glowing lights blanketed the green space, and my muscles were sore from a
day spent carrying boxes, lifting and lurching and squatting.
Natalie bit into a buttered Parker House roll. “Heaven.”
“All the produce is sourced from the green market,” Caleb said. “Along with all those artisanal foods. Spicy jams and braided
sourdough loaves.”
I held an icy glass against my achy knee, volleying glances between my two friends. One is silver and the other’s gold, went that old rhyme. They were two of the people I’d been closest to on the planet, besides Wells. Here with me on this
beautiful night. Laughing. Bantering. Where my Caleb was bumbling, this one was charming. As kids, I’d hoped we’d grow up
and be in each other’s lives forever. Through the pang, though, I was already grateful he was back in my life.
“You’re in the right place,” Caleb said, peeking beneath the table. “Knee still bothers you, huh?”
“It always has,” Natalie chimed in. “At least, since I’ve known her.”
“Surgery at sixteen can do that to a person.” I shrugged. “It was the only way to reconstruct my ligaments, but when they
said arthritis, I wish I’d heard them. Who knew that years after skiing precisely one time, I’d be sitting here holding a water glass to
my knee?”
“You were laid up for months,” Caleb said. “All I can picture that last year of high school is someone holding your books
while you crutched down the hallway.”
“Not my senior year,” I said pointedly. The year he’d moved on from me. “I was fine by then.”
Caleb speared an olive, then trapped it between his teeth. He raised his eyebrows at me, bearing into the flesh of the green
Castelvetrano. “I wouldn’t know,” he murmured.
Natalie let out a low whistle. “Time to clear the air, much?”
“All right. I’ll bite.” I placed my empty water glass back on the table, the ice jangling at its bottom. “Why did you invent
ghosting my senior year?”
“Ah. The claim I ditched you,” Caleb said. He moved the olive pit to the side of his plate. “When I could very much say the
same.”
“Uh-oh.” Natalie signaled our waiter. “Another round,” she mouthed.
I sat upright. “It’s not a claim. We were inseparable. Then you left, and we never spoke again.” I worked to keep my tone light, even though something unpleasant
hummed in my chest. Ruining nice nights went against everything I stood for. I was a smoother. “It’s been over fifteen years.
I can take it now.” Though I’d learned my lesson about indulging in not making things awkward handshakes.
Caleb leaned forward to speak over a series of car horn honks. “Livi, that’s not at all how it was.”
My nickname again. I sipped my drink. “It’s fine—”
“No,” he urged. “It’s not. Tell me what you mean.”
I swallowed hard. “I showed up at your door on Thanksgiving break. Your mother said you weren’t there. I said I’d come back
later, and she said you weren’t up to hanging out anymore.”
Two stripes of pink appeared above the scruff on Caleb’s face. “What?”
I gave a half shrug. “It was . . . humiliating. She said you didn’t want to hurt me, and then something stereotypical like ‘boys will be boys,’ and something about you being glad I was your childhood friend, but you were focusing on schoolwork and your new life. So.”
“Olivia,” he said slowly. “You came by?”
I stared. “Yes . . .”
He scraped a hand across his stubble, his lips parting. “Oh, no.”
Natalie poked my thigh under the table. While a pinwheel of emotions trawled Caleb’s expression, moving from doubt to some
kind of dawning awareness, I jammed my hand into hers, squeezed, released.
Caleb cleared his throat. “My mother saw you.”
“Saw me?”
“Leaving. After . . .” He tracked an uncertain glance to Natalie.
“Olivia’s taken pregnancy tests for me,” Natalie said. “But this is my cue to go for a lap around the restaurant. Let’s not
pretend it’s for anything other than that.” She winked. “Be back soon.”
“She’s subtle,” Caleb said.
“As a hurricane.” I shifted. “Your mom saw me leaving?”
“Yeah. Early. The morning I left for college.” He couldn’t meet my eyes. “She knew you slept over. She flipped out on me the
whole ride to school, even though I reminded her I was legally old enough to make my own decisions and on my way to life without
parental supervision. It sucked.”
I flinched at the image of teenage Olivia picking her way down the early-morning street, blissfully unaware that the mother
of the boy she’d lost her virginity to was very much aware. Mrs. Mariner probably had crossed arms, a dog leash in hand, a
frown fixed to her mouth. “But you barely talked to me after that,” I said slowly. “Rarely texted. No calls.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted,” he said. “You kept insisting that we shouldn’t be awkward.”
“Of course I did, Caleb. Why wouldn’t I want things to feel normal?”